EDITORIAL: Rape Culture Thrives on Campus

Due to an egregious oversight, Budweiser’s “Up for Whatever” campaign has come toppling down.

As part of the campaign, the company put catchy phrases on Bud Light bottles. One of the catch phrases? “The perfect beer for removing ‘no’ from your vocabulary for the night.”

Social media exploded with hundreds of people calling out what they saw as the company perpetuating rape culture. In a world where there is seemingly a new university coming under fire for excusing sexual assault every day, this was not a good move.

In a statement posted on Budweiser’s website Tuesday, Bud Light’s Vice President Alexander Lambrecht apologized for how the slogan came out and said they will cease production of this particular message.

The word “no” has become an important part of the movement to combat rape and fight back against rape culture. “No means no” has become a movement of its own, emphasizing the importance of consent.

It should be simple. It should be common sense. But apparently, it’s not.

This semester, The Daily Free Press has written editorials about rape culture and everything related to it multiple times. We’ve written about Rolling Stone magazine’s “A Rape On Campus” disaster. We’ve written about one of the brothers of Kappa Sigma at the University of Maryland writing an email to his chapter saying, “[expletive] consent.” We’ve written about the University of Oregon basketball players who went on to play while the woman they sexually assaulted had her privacy invaded and her case mishandled.

We’ve written, of course, about Boston University’s place in rape culture, how it is embedded in it and how it even perpetuates it. In May 2014, BU’s Title IX policy came under fire by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights for mishandling reports of sexual assault. BU’s new policy came into effect on Jan. 1, 2015, not that it has noticeably done any good.

Most recently, on Tuesday, we published a letter to the editor. It went viral, reaching over 100,000 people on Twitter, making it all the way to Scotland over Facebook and receiving a record-breaking number of views on our website.

The letter was from a survivor of sexual assault at BU and it described the alleged mishandling of her case. It detailed the judicial process and the appeals process, something her assailant was granted based on no new evidence. It told the story of a woman who felt that she was scorned by the institution that was supposed to protect her.

Prior to the letter’s publication, the general sentiment on campus among most people was that sexual assault doesn’t happen here. Not with BU’s comprehensive survey about sexual assault and violence, not with Sexual Assault Response and Prevention Center, not with the skit they perform at orientation about attempted rape at a party. But it does.

The letter we published was the first real outcry we’ve seen at this university in recent years. It was encouraging to keep refreshing the page and seeing the views go up, to read all the comments commending the woman for sharing her story. It was incredible to see the student body galvanize in support, tweeting at BU to share their grievances and organizing Facebook events to discuss the letter like the Feminist Collective did on Wednesday evening.

The letter opened the door for the BU administration to know that they have to be better about how they treat victims. All of the things they do and resources they have are under the guise of protecting the victim, but they don’t take into account that the way they treat the assailant affects the victim too.

What BU did by granting the assailant an appeal based on no new evidence was effectively dismissing the woman’s claims as if they were nothing.

Rather than just show a skit at orientation about how to not get raped, why don’t they focus on what happens to the assailant when they rape? Through cases such as the one told in the letter, BU is sending the message that those who sexually take advantage of others are not punished within the structure of the university. BU does not treat rape as a violent crime, but instead just a wrongdoing that can be overturned with the touch of an appeal.

When BU first received the report, they took all the necessary steps and provided the victim with appropriate protection. They didn’t neglect their duties as a university: they did a thorough investigation and ultimately punished the assailant. But then the appeals process began. And the lengthy initial investigation, which spanned several weeks and involved several leaders across BU, was seemingly shoved under the rug with the decision of Provost Jean Morrison to grant the appeal. The victim thought her case had been closed and she could move on in peace. She was happy with the way the school had handled her case. That is, until, the school suddenly changed its mind.

And so maybe the problem isn’t the system used to handle sexual assault reports — after all, the investigation was thorough and led to a punishment for the assailant — but instead who is given the power to make the final decisions. Why are educators, who were largely trained to support the academic and social lives of students, making decisions about what should be a criminal investigation?

As the semester comes to a close, we hope BU can take a step back from the academic year and evaluate where they stand with their sexual assault policies. We didn’t publish this letter to the editor to make BU look bad or aimlessly point blame. We did this because there is a continuing problem on this campus, and thus far, BU has done nothing to fix it except for create a comprehensive sexual assault survey.

But surveys won’t provide justice for victims, and surveys won’t protect students.

What BU needs is a real change. Not a professionally crafted statement from a spokesman or quiet behind-the-scenes meetings with deans, but a loud statement saying that BU is aware that we have a problem and they’re ready to fix it.